Last week, Business Wire Newport Beach held a media breakfast for more than 70 Orange County area communicators and PR professionals to discuss trends in the media industry and tips for reaching out to Newport area media.

On trends in the news industry: Social media, interactive and mobile remain on the rise. The AP is active on all three of these fronts. They’ve trained their reporters to get video and also supply footage to broadcast media. Multimedia is very important to them, and while they often have their own photographers in the field, photos with press releases are especially important if they are images the reporters cannot easily get themselves.

Mobile has revolutionized the news industry. The AP has been extremely aggressive about adapting to mobile. AP Mobile is a very popular news app for BlackBerry and iPhone.

The AP is on Facebook and Twitter and has also been experimenting with blogging. Many of their beat reporters have their own Twitter accounts and that is one way to find them.

When pitching to the AP in Southern California, your best bet is usually to send it to the Los Angeles bureau, as the Orange County bureau is very small. Their reporters share information all the time with each other, so if it’s relevant to a specific region, it will be passed along to them.

Lisa Liddane, Coast Magazine & OrangeCounty.com:

Reporting is starting to be very personality-driven. The lines in objective reporting are blurring as trends like blogging become more popular.

The best way to reach Coast Magazine is email. Be very clear in your subject line. It’s very helpful to you to find a local angle and include it in your pitch.

Know who you are pitching to and what their publication schedule is. For example, a print magazine versus daily newspaper or broadcast news.

Print publications like Coast Magazine need high res photos at 300 DPI. If you don’t have a high res picture, sometimes they can still use a lower resolution one for online.

Jerry Sullivan, Orange County Business Journal:

Do the research to find the right reporter to target. For the OCBJ (and many publications), you can find reporters by the beat they cover on the publication website.

Look for trends or a local angel to incorporate your company or news into. For example, the OCBJ is interested in stories about media companies buying smaller companies, or stories involving local executives.

Press releases can lead to media coverage in roundabout ways. They might just call attention to your company and cause a reporter to look into them when they otherwise wouldn’t have thought to.

When including photos with your release, identify the people in the photo left to right whenever possible.

Join Business Wire experts in your area for media breakfasts, panel discussions and other insightful events. We bring local media members and industry thought leaders to your market to discuss today’s most relevant topics, from writing for SEO to marketing with social media. Best of all, Business Wire events are usually free of charge. Check out some of our upcoming events in your area:

Join us for lunch and an opportunity to meet members of Nashville-area media, and participate in a discussion on how reporting has evolved amid the popularity of social media websites such as Twitter and Facebook. Paul Kuharsky from ESPN.com and Amy Napier Viteri with WKRN-TV will be discussing how social media has affected traditional news reporting while Rob Robinson of McNeely Pigott & Fox will be providing his own unique insight on pitching stories from a public relations perspective. This event is free for all attendees.

Thursday, November 4 at 11:30 am CTMaggiano’s Little Italy
3106 West End Avenue, Nashville, TN 37203
Free valet or self-parking is available on-site

Join Business Wire Newport Beach for free breakfast and a meet the media event. Speakers include: Gillian Flaccus, Orange County Correspondent, The Associated Press; Michele Gile, News Reporter, CBS/KCAL; Lisa Liddane, Editor at Large, Coast Magazine and Editor in Chief of OrangeCounty.com; and Jerry Sullivan, Managing Editor, Orange County Business Journal. This event is free for Business Wire members, $25 for all other guests with advanced RSVP and $35 at the door.

How to Increase your Website’s Ranking by Issuing Press Releases

Hosted by Business Wire Dallas

Join Business Wire for lunch and a discussion on the simple steps that will help your company’s website rank higher on Google, Yahoo and Bing by issuing press releases via Business Wire. Learn the #1 factor that search engines consider when ranking your website and why Google loves press releases, and get step-by-step instructions on how to easily optimize your releases so that Google sees your website as a popular and trusted source. We’ll also discuss Business Wire’s exclusive SEO platform for boosting your search results long-term and how to combine your press release and social media efforts to boost search rankings. This event is free for Business Wire members and $10 for non-members.